Monday

It’s been a full forty-eight hours since I’ve returned to the city from my Christmas break and have just finished the last of the procrastination cleaning to settle down and do some writing. Procrastination cleaning is the only sort of cleaning I’m able to do; the washing up, the bathroom and toilet floor, the recycling and the sink and bath, not to mention the hobs, surfaces and scenting the bathroom with Summer Splash Febreze. I also went for a run, as exercise is one of my many new years resolutions (carried over from last year when I succeeded in running a full four mornings before giving up.)

I put on my silver Puma trainers my parents brought me last season, my pyjama bottoms and old Rocket-from-the-Crypt hoodie (which my brother gave to me when I was fifteen) and set off into the foggy winter night. I managed to run all the way up, and then back down the hill to Alexandra Palace before collapsing red faced and gooey-limbed onto my bed, puffing on the inhaler I stole from my Dad over the holiday.

I then ran myself a bath, having to run the tap at a piddle as the boiler pressure has gone and that’s the only way to get hot water. I dropped one of the smellies I got for Christmas – a heart shaped pink bath bomb with rose petals - under the trickle and left it to dissolve. Twenty minutes later I climbed in, feeling a bit like Ophelia disturbing all the twigs and plant bits that floated in the pink water. Now I know I must be a real adult woman by the fact that people buy me smellies when at a loss as to what to get me. Although I also got some Rainbow Bright pyjamas which squashes that notion. Incidently they weren't the pyjamas I wore jogging.  

Since my return not much has happened and frankly I’m bored. Having spent the last week and a half with family playing games and enjoying an inner warmth in the depths of the countryside (and Southampton), I’ve returned to an empty flat where the streets outside are trampled by grumpy-looking malcontents.

I did a shift at The Unicorn on Sunday and was thinking that my six months working there as an usher have been fruitful as I’ve checked the tickets of Harry Enfield, Jude Law and David Bower (Hugh Grants brother in Four Weddings and a Funeral), and seen Richard Curtis, Mariella Frostrup, Diversity and Alesha Dixon in the building, providing far more opportunities for networking than my other exploits of the last two years. I also unwittingly followed the woman who plays Bianca from EastEnders into the ladies toilet while she explained the concept of green screens to her five-year-old child. 

Wednesday

I have realised, that when I was poor, I read the classics on my bookshelf and ate accordingly - five veg and lots of carbs. I was very healthy, although slightly too dependent on cheap ice-cream wrapped in cardboard (the sort that when we finished as children, we used to let our mutt-dog, Sam, lick the wrapper under the table), but pretty well all the same. Although now the skies are clear financially, I intend to keep up the simple life and not be tempted by the excesses of the city.

My first step in this direction was to go to the Natural History Museum last Sunday. Although it was filled with hot Dads, it was a slightly disappointing experience compared to the memory that I held most dear from when I was about ten years old.

The fossils and rocks were just plain dull, the Biology slightly more gripping (although the giant baby in a woman's womb with heart-beat sound-effects was simply haunting), and the dinosaurs and mammal section enthralling. Someone said to me at brunch the other day that she went on an awful date at the NHM - I think I would have been charmed. The queue to see the dinos was 45 minutes long, so I skipped that and went on to learn that a centipede actually runs faster than a cheetah (realitively you understand), and that in the kitchen reconstruction a French-man made me jump by letting me pass to look in a sink with the usual washing up and a daddy-long-legs to which he went rahh! when I leaned over to inspect the species. I was not amused although his friends were in stitches. 

Seven pounds to go and see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition! I decided to opt out and will instead nick my father's catalogue that he always gets that will inform me of the winners and special recommendations for 2008. I did glimpse a photo of a tree frog fighting a snake - jaw to jaw - which I will look forward to seeing in close up and without a ginger headed German in my way loudly asking for directions for which way to see the Albatross.

The following weekend was a trip to The London Zoo - highlights being the meerkats and aquarium. No Elephants. My flatmate Sarah pointed out that all the animals looked like they had no souls - their eyes were dead and unhopeful, the steel bars marring her photos and their sense of freedom. No hot dads and it was so much smaller than I remembered, although I suppose I was so much smaller when I last visited.

This Easter weekend I made a trip to Wiltshire, the moon-raking county, to see my parents. This included a five mile walk on easter sunday, followed by a seven mile walk on bank holiday monday where we encountered a man collecting dandelion flowers with his ratter dog with the intention of making wine on the crest between Druids Lodge and the valley down to the Langfords. The holiday was heaven - two and a half days of blissful sunshine and flowers - is this what I'm missing living in the big smoke? The icing on the cake was catching a glimpse of the bird of Wiltshire  - The great bustard, which was made instinct from trigger-happy Victorians until about ten years ago when it was re-introduced from Russia. It was strutting about in the field behind my parent's property. A lonely male - the female away on some sort of migration - it was an adolescent performing it's mating dance with feathers quivering with the local swans freaking out and taking flight to the nearest lake. 

On the way home, after a peaceful barbeque by the herb patch in my parent's orchard with help of the cimenaya (smoky yet satisfying sausage and ciabatta babs), I endured standing on the train until Clapham Junction where a nice business man offered me his seat. At the time I was quite happily sat in the centre of the aisle reading the first Adrian Mole book and chuckling to myself every five minutes. The seat, although apparently a blessing, actually soiled my good mood as every time I ventured to peek out the window at the transcendental sunset, the woman on the window side - evidently listening to phil Collins followed by Kylie (I should be so lucky no doubt) - which I could hear by the pumping bass that was eeking out of her headphones. It wasn't so much the music, but the fact that every-time I glanced towards the vista, she, thinking I was looking at her perhaps in true city-ite fashion(?) tutted audibly and glanced towards me with irritation. She was probably ashamed by her taste in music. I would be, let's face it.

Friday

I rang Haringey Council up today to ask if I simply needed to nip into the nearest Job Centre to apply for a jobseekers allowance - the man on the other end of the phone answered rather rudely that, yes, I did. One hour and four pounds on bus fare later I arrived home having been told that I had to call an 0800 number to apply over the phone. Four pounds, you realise, could've brought me a weeks worth of food. I'm considering complaining about how ironic it is that they are there to help you through times of need but instead purposefully forfeit your vulnerable budget to the evils of living in the capital. Am considering writing a Down and Out in Paris and London-type novel to off-load my woes of poverty onto the rest of the world and get paid for it. 

I also received a phone-call from my dear friend in Wantage and we had a rather long conversation planning what we would have for dinner if he were to come and visit this saturday. Carbonara seems to be on the cards and, after momentarily panicking about whether I have enough cheese to avoid a wall-paper-paste situation, we salivated over the thought of the dish for a good ten minutes. This is what life has been reduced to; two twenty-three year olds becoming worryingly excited over cheese sauce and bacon. We might have to skip on the cream unless I can convince him to buy some as payment for a sofa for the night. 

Four days later and I'm in the job centre in front of my interviewer; a smartly dressed Indian woman with excesses of lip gloss on who keeps muttering things into her computer. She suddenly points at me wide eyed, making me jump, and asks if I'm under twenty five. I nod hesitantly, at which point she whips her monitor around to face my side of the desk and fills out a referral form to the Prince's Trust. She got very excited about this and asked me if I'd put her in one of my films. A mad man came in and started insulting one of the staff in the booth next to us and at that point and she flattened down onto the desk with the smoothness of a contract killer on a tricky assignment (I felt compelled to do the same) and at the end of each of his sentences rolls her eyes at me and sniggers like a teenager. We listened for about five minutes until he left and so she handed me some papers and told me if my claim gets rejected to sign on in two weeks regardless. She gave me a little wink and said it was a gift from her. My faith is restored in the council - perhaps they do have my interests at heart after all.

Friday

To celebrate the new year I have not only given up smoking and been rewarded with a bout of asthma attacks, but have also realised I have an authority complex as I go into 2009 still pretty much unemployed and living on beans on toast. The Christmas cake will hold out over the weekend I think, but I'll need to come up with something else to satisfy my alcohol and tobacco cravings until I, A: decide to sell all my stuff and escape to my friends new house in the North of Thailand, or B: become a life model and take up other such random ways to pay the rent like looking after brats in Belsize Park two days a week, or take out a loan and learn how to do spread betting... the possibilities are endless. 

As a mantra I keep telling myself that Shakespeare didn't find success until he was twenty-four, but then wondering if I'm confusing this fact with Quentin Tarantino's first film. Or was it Stanley Kubrick? Wikipedia is supposedly too unreliable to tell me truthfully so I'll assume it was all three, which means I have six months to go. 

Shakespeare apparently wasn't particularly prolific for a playwright of his time (or so says Bill Bryson... guess what I got for Christmas) and stole a lot of his poetry from Ovid, or whatever his name was. Not that I'm slagging off Shakespeare, but I can't help remembering my distraction when I went to see 'As you like it' at The Minack Theatre. The sun was setting and there were frolicking dolphins on the horizon, both holding much more appeal than mistaken identities and barely audible delivery. And then there was the Elephant Hawk moth that appeared in front of me because it was attracted to the light under my seat and prompted one of the more frightening of my various near death experiences. Rowena Cade should really have thought about the potentially life-threatening surrounding wildlife before letting her successors rip us off with a non-distracting adaptation of one of Shakepeare's less-than-gripping plays. It really was a beautiful theatre however and feel I must be brave, face the music, and go back there one day.

Anyway, thanks to the wonderful Roald Dahl, I've been inspired to write a collection of short stories in the same vein as my short film The Spy - i.e dark and disturbing. Already, last night, I had a wonderfully strange dream about a house that I broke into and couldn't escape and then realised I would be trapped there forever. I did read the beginning of The Yellow Wallpaper before I left for Christmas however, and so better keep reading to check I'm not ripping it off. 

Authority complexes aside, I sent my CV to a smattering of Waterstones branches in Central London and got a rather shirty reply from one of the managers stating I should check the website for vacancies, evidently not aware that the website tells you to CONTACT THE BRANCH DIRECTLY. Some people.

Tuesday

Things are finally looking up and I am now officially a freelancer... not that I've been paid, or more to the point, completed any work for said production company, but it's done wonders for my confidence. Unfortunately, I'm also still stuck in my flat in Hornsey with rabid hysterics wandering about on the streets outside. And, perhaps even more unfortunate, one has recently been re-born as one of my flatmates, her excuse being - that time of the month. I'm now scared to emerge from my room and have armed myself with one of the rocks from the fish-tank the Colombian left behind, as well as a pot of black ink. It was all I could find, but I think a combination of the two will ward her off.

I have also really got onto this writing lark and am attempting to build up some sort of portfolio to show off my range. It helps, that behind the school blocking the magnificent vista from my window, there are a thin strip of Dickensian houses visible that look especially good under the recent full moon and August smog, so I only need glance out the window to get my fingers typing. True, this may only be when the security guards have left the premises, or have gone round the back to turf out rouge smokers and tramps dressed as school-children. You think I joke.

Another perk of this freelance business is I don't just have to restrict myself to writing and film, and so will be attending a casting workshop on Friday... that is, if I can get hold of Amy the casting agent. I received a call from her two weeks ago when walking on Hampstead Heath and was offered the opportunity to come along. I immediately panicked as the photo I sent her only reveals the top, better-looking part of my face - my coat obscuring the rest. I'll make sure when I turn up, to not smile at her properly and wear a turtle-neck jumper so she doesn't change her mind. I'll just have to sweat it out.

I've also decided to start up yoga again, and this time I won't have an embarrassing exercise mat that I let my gay friend pick out in the heat of the moment and end up having to perform sun salutations on top of line drawings of men with visible arm-pit hair and hard ons for six sore sessions. My old tutor Amanda was not impressed - I swear when I complained of back pain she purposefully massaged me wrong so that I walked around resembling Igor for the following weeks. 

A final update is that I've made a list of 'Things I want': 

1. To be named 'the next Sylvia Plath', 2. To study filmmaking in Paris 3. Some fish for the fish-tank 4. To publish a Sophie Calle-style book (I've found someone's address book and everything), and 5. To obtain more varieties of gaffa tape.

Wednesday

Having come home from the Screenwriters Festival to find I missed my mate Tony B at Marxist Fest I have been in a distinctly bad mood all week. The hangover I acquired on Saturday that is still festering behind my eyeballs probably didn't help. The whole of Sunday was written off and Monday morning was a bit dodgy as well, although the boss only seemed to notice something was up when I started laughing hysterically to myself every-time the internet everywhere stick dropped the connection. 

I've been reminiscing over the glory days when we were in production; the Epsom Derby where I got to flash a press pass under people's noses and carry fake blood and gaffer tape in around in my handbag without raising any eyebrows. Our trip to Morpeth and a rather awkward meal with the suffragette's relatives and admirers where I got too drunk and scared everyone with my red-wine-teeth and got into trouble for flirting with the taxi-driver. The marathon run up a spiral staircase in Victoria Tower and chasing people with the suffragette's sash telling them they'll be haunted if they touch it (if anyone that works in the Houses of Parliament happens to be reading this - I'm joking.... we're not meant to touch it without gloves).  

Wednesday

Having taken a few days off from the Suffragette, I've made a trip to the Cotswolds to attend the Screenwriters Festival. Last night a marquee of delighted delegates perched entranced on the edge of their seats (myself included) as Mike Leigh sat in conversation with Simon Relph. He wowed the crowd with very long and elaborate answers, although they weren't as 'hippy-dippy' as the question a particular American woman asked that had absolutely no coherence at all - we all tried to contain our laughter, as after ten minutes she still hadn't come to her point. He shed a lot of light on his methods but didn't feed the hungry ears the answer we all wanted to hear: how can we be like you? I became distracted by Mike's beard and felt the usual pangs of beard envy set in. Looking behind me sneakily, I regarded the wide-eyed mob and wondered if perhaps (seeing the lack of beards generally) that this was the reason for his wondrous powers. I am now considering going against the advise my brother gave to me when I was five and in fact start shaving to encourage stubble to grow on my chin. Everyone respects a man with a beard - Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Brian Blessed... Having your face partially covered shows you are wise and weathered, and is the only mark of a writer that excludes you from the ugly rule.

Today, having attended the first lecture with Julian Fellowes, I now sit on a bench at The Manor on the Lake contemplating the point of all this. Most of what Julian said brought me firmly down to earth with statements that I knew were true, but didn't like to be told all the same. My particular favourites include You are never safe until you are standing on set,' and, on being part of the British Film Industry - 'It's like making a cake with lead in it.' Beards aside, not only are we writers meant to be ugly and have no personalities (old jokes I know, but it's true), we are also stupid enough to have chosen a profession that will most likely never get us anywhere. At the tender age of 23, and having not actually written my spec script yet, I am feeling panicked at the thought of diving into this career. At least my nervous twitch hasn't returned. And, on an even more positive note, I haven't found any flea bites from my stay in the YMCA last night.